As a result of the explosive growth of public networks such as the Internet, and specifically, a portion of the Internet known as the World Wide Web ("the Web"), the quantity of information available to computer users has risen drastically. Users typically view documents from the Web using a computer software application known as a browser that displays all or a portion of a particular document in one or more graphical windows.
Documents on the Web are formatted using a standard language known as the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and navigation between documents is typically handled through hypertext links defined between a source location in one document and a target location in the same or another document. A user navigates from the source to the target typically by selecting a hypertext link definition at the source location. In addition, a hypertext link definition can be associated with a particular object displayed in a document so that the associated object may be selected by a user to activate a hypertext link. Hypertext link definitions may be associated with a wide variety of display objects such as text, images, sounds, animation, and video clips, among others.
Users can often find information on the Internet about practically any subject of interest, with new subjects and new information about those subjects being added every day. However, the Internet is inherently unstructured, and it is often difficult to find all of the information about a particular subject of interest without significant searching. Moreover, many users find that a great deal of this information is not very useful, and as a result, many users also waste a significant amount of time browsing through worthless information.
To stem the tide of "information overload", many users maintain lists of favorite locations where they have found useful information about various subjects of interest. These favorite locations may be stored in a bookmark (or favorites) list for later retrieval by a user. Typically, a bookmark list is accessed using a drop-down menu or a separate window for the browser. In addition, many lists permit users to organize favorite locations into one or more folders based upon the subject matter of the locations.
It is common for users to check on favorite locations from time to time to keep current on a particular area of interest. However, a great deal of time is often wasted visiting favorite locations that have not been updated since the last time a user visited. As users add more and more favorite locations to their lists, the amount of time wasted when visiting stale documents increases, and it often becomes unproductive to check all of the users' favorite locations for new material on a recurring basis.
Many browsers do some rudimentary checking of the update status of locations stored in a user's bookmark or favorites list. Typically, the checking is performed by comparing the current contents of a location with a cached, or local copy, of the contents that was stored the last time a user visited the location. The contents checked by a browser may also be limited to just the hypertext links, or everything but the hypertext links. In addition, the size of a document stored at a particular location may be compared to the size of a cached copy of a document to determine whether a location has been updated since a last visit. Updated locations are typically indicated within a bookmark or favorite list using a separate icon preceding the display of each updated location.
Conventional manners of indicating the update status of documents at given locations are limited in several respects. First, only bookmarked locations, which a user must have manually stored in the browser at one point or another, are checked. A burden is therefore placed on a user to ensure that all locations to be monitored are stored and organized in a bookmark list. Second, the only manner of indicating the update status of a document location is in a bookmark list, thereby requiring a user to open a separate menu or window to view update status information. Third, practically any change to a document, no matter how insubstantial, can trigger the indication of an updated location. As an example, it may be frustrating for a user to specifically navigate to a document believed to contain new information, only to find that a minor formatting change has been implemented with no modification to the document's content.
Therefore, a significant need continues to exist for a manner of improving the determination and display of the update status of documents.